Almost a Woman

So begins Esmeralda Santiago's Almost a Woman, a riveting memoir of the coming-of-age of a young Puerto Rican girl in New York City. When "Negi", as her family calls her, makes the biggest move of all -- from Puerto Rico to a crowded tenement apartment in Brooklyn, she enters a new phase of her life: the transition from one culture to another, and from childhood to womanhood.

Watched over by a strict mother and a tippling grandmother, Negi lives in two worlds, guiding her family into the new world of America in the mornings and attending New York's prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons. And all the while she works toward an understanding of who she is -- child, woman, American and Puerto Rican.